"Your body is the first thing any child of man ever wanted. Therefore dispose yourself to be loved, to be wanted, to be available. Be there for them with a vengeance. Be a gracious, bending woman. Incline your ear, your heart, your hands to them.... To be a Mother is to be the sacrament - the effective symbol - of place. Mothers do not make homes, they are our home." from Bed and Board, Robert Farrar Capon

Friday, November 18, 2011

Where Mundane Touches Sacred

A wonderful lady emailed over a link to this article -

"I hold the laundry tight and inhale extra long and think about the
love that is modeled when a woman washes the same clothes over and over,
day in, day out—almost touching something sacred—this washing and
consecrating of material things for a noble and good purpose. The
renewal that comes from being clean. My heart aches for that washing
too. Perhaps it’s a blessed thing, this daily rhythm of life. We love the grand scale, the best days, the shiny things. The bright newness of God’s blessed restoration.

But what about all those ordinary days? Where is God then?

He always chooses the ordinary things to do his greatest work.

He chose bread to feed us. Water to wash us. A baby to save us.

He is no despiser of the small days.

It is in them that we see the key to life.

Not in falling in love but in loving everyday, with clean socks and warm soup.

Not in that one blissful day of childbirth but in the birth of each
day, one a time, where the daily routine teaches us to depend on our
Father, who has made no provision for tomorrow—but only today, in this
daily bread. Perhaps this thing I’ve come to dread— this daily drudgery— is in fact my greatest teacher, in disguise.

Teaching me to live in this moment. With these children. And this sacred work. It’s really all there is.

one of the verses that often comes to my mind and I’m now beginning to understand as a mother is, “She shall be saved in childbearing.” 1 timothy 2:15. In other words, she shall have to fiercely hang to Christ’s promises of salvation when she feels salvation is far from her, she shall daily have to die to her own desires, she shall daily have to live for others. The flesh that is this frustrated and the soul that is this desperate for Christ’s forgiveness can only be saved! May our Gracious God preserve us in our callings.

Your expansion on 1 Tim 2:15 is true and so well put. Another scripture that often comes to my mind, being revealed to me through my daily "drudgery," is Col 3:3 - "Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God." For the works we do, over and over, in our homes are truly "hidden" from the rest of the world, even from our own family at times :), and through them God works in us a certain "deadness" to an unquenchable longing for visible results, recognition, accolades, etc., until we come, daily, to the revelation that our lives, now completely enveloped within the righteousness of Christ alone, therefore released from striving for some worldly recognized status level, are FREE to be poured out in the most menial tasks (washing feet, anybody?) in faith, visible to God.

That is actually, to me, a quite freeing and comforting thought in it all.